Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney (part 2)

GA [to GC]: And you've set yourself a challenge because you've now directed a film - it's an adaptation of a rather strange book; the adaptation is by Charlie Kaufman who is renowned for making such straightforward films as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. It's a terrific first film; did you enjoy making it?

GC: I had the time of my life, it was really fun. But that was a screenplay that was around for years, for five years at Warner Bros. Warners was never going to make the film because it didn't fit into what they could do as a studio, so they were sort of using it as bait to bring a good director in. Every good director was attached to it for a while, Fincher was and Curtis Hanson, a lot of good directors had it in their hands and were going to do it, and good actors. And so, I knew the responsibility going in was, that everyone would go, "Why the hell are you letting him do this?" So I wanted to be really prepared. I spent six months storyboarding every single shot in every scene and building transitions into each of the scenes. Some of that boxed me in later, editing-wise, but not too bad. I was able to get to fix some of the things. We had a really good time. And we came in ahead of schedule and under-budget, all the things that were important to me because I didn't want Miramax to edit the film on the floor. I didn't want them pulling pages from me; I wanted to edit it in the editing room. And it was my responsibility to come in under with other people's money so that I could get everything done. And we had hired the best people: Tom Siegel was the DP who shot Three Kings, and Steve Mirrione who's a brilliant editor was a huge impact on the film as well. Really talented, smart people came on board and it was a really fun time. I loved it.

GA: Are you interested in trying to pursue a parallel career as a director?

GC: It's an interesting thing, I didn't set out to be a director. I'm an actor and still trying to figure that out. So my reason for directing the film was that it had fallen apart, and it had had so much money against it in pre-production costs - about $5m - so it was now becoming cost prohibitive and it wasn't going to be made, period. So I made the film because I knew I could come on board and do it for scale, get everybody else to work for scale and we could make the film. I'd been looking for that, a film that I understood. You know, I grew up in live TV, my father had a gameshow when I was 10 years old which was The Money Maze, which was a giant maze and the husband would run through it and the wife would stand above it and say, "Go left! Go right!" Which seems like a perfect statement on the state of television and society at that time. So I grew up on those sets, I knew what they were like. And I understood the trappings of certain kinds of fame. And I thought it was funny, the idea that you could somehow compare bad television to the CIA just made me laugh out loud. So it seemed like if I could find something that I have an understanding of ... We've a picture that Steven wrote a draft of, called Leatherheads. It's about football in the 1920s - it's more sort of a screwball comedy so I've been watching all the Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges films, trying to understand the simplicity of that master shot and that two shot because they're so complicated, it's unbelievable. So if I can figure that one out and understand it, I could take a spin at that one. Steven has such a specific view for each film and he's going through genres, and he can go, "I can do this but I don't want to try this." I don't have that kind of understanding of film.

GA: You do have a sort of inclination towards less mainstream work; do you feel more comfortable doing that? For instance, with Batman, you've been quite open that you didn't really enjoy that. I don't think The Perfect Storm was exactly your finest moment.

GC: But each of those leads to another. I owed the studio a picture and the truth was that until Perfect Storm came out, the big knock on me was that I was not going to survive coming out of television. And the funniest thing about that is, the film made like $180m in the States and I got credit for that film opening when in fact it was about a giant wave. It was about basically CGI, but I'd taken such a hit from Batman and Robin that I didn't deserve that I was like, "Fuck it, I'll take the credit." It wasn't a very good film; it could have been but I figure, you sort of have to do one for them every once in a while. That's the deal. And I thought, if I have to do one for them, why not do one where it's six guys and they all die in the end. Honestly, at least it's not like the films that I get offered everyday. And you look at them and go, "I can't do the junket for this, I can't go do press for these films." And it brings an end to your career pretty quick, so I'm trying to find good scripts. That's what we're working on.

GA [to SS]: When we met in November, you said you were going to take a year off, is that correct?

SS: Yeah.

GA: I find it hard to believe that somebody as busy - you've mentioned that you're doing two books and another little short film in the meantime anyways.

SS: Yeah. I need some time to rethink what I've been up to. I still don't feel like I'm working at level where I would like to be working. I've made some interesting movies, I don't think I've made a great movie, or a movie on a level of the films that I think of as great. I want to figure out how to step it up a little bit, so I need to clear my head for a year and see if I can figure that out. And who knows, maybe I'll never get there, but I feel that I have to make a more concentrated effort to make something ... To me the testament of a great movie is that when you see it, you just go, "I've never seen anything like this before." Just something that completely transports you. I don't know what that is but I want to try and find it, if I can. I need to just take a breather. But the one thing that I should talk about, George's film; I knew he was going to do a good job because he pays attention and he loves movies and he made a real piece of cinema. Five minutes into it, the first time I saw it, I completely forgot that it was George's movie - I was just watching a movie with actual cinematic ideas in it. He understands how to put a sequence together, and how to move from one place to another, and it wasn't, like many films made by actors the first time out, a pedestal that he erected to stand himself on top of. It's not about him, and he's only in it because that was part of the deal to get the film made. It was really fun to see him go through that process, especially in post-production, that's where the movie really comes alive.

GC: My first cut was about half an hour longer, and the first time I showed it to Steven all together, he said, "It's great, you're gonna cut, like, three of your favourite shots," and I'm like, "You're stoned, dude." About a month later, I cut those shots, which killed me, but Steven was infinitely helpful ... it's a story told from three different narratives of a guy in three different periods in his life and sort of coming to terms with the idea of having a specific one that you could really focus on and that was where he was really helpful in understanding that. It's a wild process.

GA: Yes, I think we've got Chuck Barris coming along for the interview after the screening of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

GA: He's the man some might consider to be responsible for the dumbing down of television. He got very involved in devising gameshows and things. But he also claims to be a CIA assassin.

GC: He wrote a book that basically said that while he was creating The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, he killed 33 people.

[Laughter]

GA: Anyway, you can see it for yourselves but meanwhile, you can also ask some questions.

Q1: My question is about a project called Gates of Fire which is based on a book? I know that you've been associated with it as producer ...

GC: Pressfield's book? Yeah, for a long time. We acquired the book before Steven and I were in the company. It was the one film that we held on to when I changed companies. It'll be a hell of a film - it'll cost $170m to make, and Michael Mann's attached, he's working on the screenplay. He'll call every once in a while and go, "I think there should be a battle at sea," which is like another $70m. And Rome burns, you know? And the question is, whether or not they find a practical way to make the film. We'd had it for six or seven years when Gladiator came out and sort of stole the thunder. I hope it will be made and I hope that Michael makes it. We don't know, and Michael's pretty busy now.

Q1a: I definitely think you should play Xeo in that.

GC: You think? I want to play Xerxes. I want to be the king of Persia, cause I am so ready for that.

Q2: You say you're looking for a good script. I've got one here.

GC: Send it up here. I'm not slinging a bat in it, am I?

Q3: We've not seen your new film but just from the description we've just heard, it sounds like you and Steven share this craving for fragmented narratives. Where did this come from?

GC: Well, talk to Nic Roeg. Talk to the master of non-linear storytelling. Steven is sort of responsible for bringing it back and taking it to a different level and I've been watching him. And I just think it's so much more interesting. You watch The Limey and you just go, "God, I just love the way he's experimenting with time." Watch Don't Look Now.

SS: And a lot of that was coming, I'm sure Nic would agree, when the French New Wave broke. I remember reading an interview with Godard when he said a group of film-makers were present for the first screening of Hiroshima Mon Amour, and they were all just sort of staggered by what Resnais had done, they just hadn't seen anything like that before. And there was a freedom in French and British cinema of the late 50s and early 60s that somehow took a while to get to the States - it showed up in 67 or so and played out and died at the end of the 70s when auteur cinema in the US just got beaten into the ground.

GA: It was really Petulia, wasn't it, made by Richard Lester and shot by Nic Roeg.

SS: Yeah, which was an amazing film and obviously Pulp Fiction did a lot as well to bring the idea of non-linear narrative back into the mainstream. As we were talking earlier, it's easy to screw up. You find in the editing room, if there's been a lot of trial and error, what's fascinating is the connections that happen when you're rearranging things and pulling scenes out and suddenly there's a connection between two scenes that never showed a connection before. That's really exciting.

Q4: You've helped Chris Nolan develop and produce Insomnia which is based on a foreign movie. There's a rumour that you're doing an adaptation of Nine Queens, the Argentine movie. Would there be any other foreign movies that you'd like to adapt and any foreign directors that you'd like to work with?

SS: Nine Queens came about because the producers of the film were shopping the rights around town and we saw the film and said, "We gotta get that, we gotta get it right now" and made a very aggressive play to get the rights. Part of the reason we did it was I've been trying to find a project for several years now, for Greg Jacobs, my assistant director, who I think should be directing. I showed him the film immediately after watching it myself and he agreed that it was terrific and provided some interesting opportunities if you have the younger character Hispanic and you keep the older character white, there's a lot of interesting race issues to get into, especially if you set it in Los Angeles, which is a very segregated city. So I'm very excited about that. We're always looking for stuff that we think can benefit from being remade.

Q5: Solaris reminded me and aroused the same feelings as when I saw Kubrick's vision in 2001: A Space Odyssey. How influenced were you by that particular film?

SS: Well, the answer is everybody who's seen 2001 has been influenced by it. It's not just a watershed science-fiction film, it's a watershed piece of cinema. I think it's one of the most significant pieces of art created in the last century. What I think you gain when you watch any Kubrick film, or any Tarkovsky, any Antonioni or Bergman film, more than any specifics is just this absolute commitment to the original idea to make the film, the clarity of it, the passion. It's inspiring. With our film, we can make references to a couple of other films, whether it's 2001, Alphaville or Altered States. He had no references. Nobody had ever seen anything like that, ever. And it's a two hour 20 minute film about contact with a higher form of intelligence and there's not a single genuine human interaction in the entire film. The bravery of that, to stick to that idea, just amazes me. And so, when we were doing the film, we found a beautiful 70mm print that we screened at Warner Bros about two weeks before we started shooting Solaris. And the lights came on and basically all the crew turned to me and went, "Yeah, good luck."

[Laughter]

SS: We should have screened an Ed Wood film.

GA: 2001 was philosophical in its ambitions; yours is philosophical and human. I mean, one of the great things about Solaris is it brings up all sorts of interesting questions but at the same time, there was real warmth in the relationship between George and Natascha, and I found it a very emotionally affecting film and philosophically intriguing.

SS: Well, that was our hope. That if you were to make a film with a similar idea, which is indirect contact with some other form of intelligence, that there was a version to be made in which every human interaction was emotional. We were all envisioning a kind of flipside to that. Again, I think we've had a difficult time trying to give an audience who hasn't seen the film an idea of what the experience is, the rhythms are very unusual, the way the narrative plays out is very unusual. We previewed the film - you've heard the story of the guy who stood up at the press conference in Berlin saying, "I think your film is boring." Listen, I sat through focus groups in the US and I've heard a lot worse than that. I think he thought I was going to be shocked by that and he had no idea what we'd been through. And to try to reduce the film to a single image or a TV spot or a trailer was just extremely difficult. I don't think we solved it in the US, but at least here in Europe we've had the benefit of two months of screenings to let people discover it a little bit.

Q6: You were talking about focus groups, and I heard a rumour that Solaris had one of the worst ratings despite it being brilliant. How are your relations with the studio? Is there a relationship in the sequence of films that you work on, for example doing Ocean's Twelve after Solaris?

SS: There's a very direct relation for me. There were three projects that I wanted to do after my sabbatical. Ocean's was one of them. I had the idea when we were actually in Europe promoting the first one. The other one is a project called The Informant, which is based on the true story of a price-fixing scandal in the 80s, and the other is called The Good German, based on a novel by Joseph Kanon, set in Berlin between VE Day and VJ Day. The Informant and The Good German are seriously strange movies, really weird but, I hope, interesting. When Solaris tanked in the States on the heels of Full Frontal tanking, I immediately called George and said, "We're going to do Ocean's first."

[Laughter]

I can't get Warners to pay for The Informant and The Good German on the heels of these two films. I wouldn't pay for them.

GC: Warners were really happy - we sat them down and said, "Okay, we've got good news: we're going to do Ocean's Twelve," and they said, "Oh, Jesus, thank God." Then we said, "And you have to pick up the tab for The Good German and The Informant," and they went, "Okay, fine, whatever."

SS: And that's the reality of the film business - all three of them are movies that I'm excited about. There's a commercial and practical issue that you can't pretend doesn't exist.

GC: It goes back to what we're trying to do, which is do the films that we think are interesting and that people should see, within the structure of the studio system. And part of that means that we have to find some compromises that will help get it done. I don't think you can look at Solaris and think, "That's a compromise film." If the compromise is Ocean's Eleven, that's a good film and we're proud of it, so we'll do this, and happily, because entertainment's a good thing and I don't think it's something to be ashamed of. It's a balancing act, though.

Q7: I haven't read the Lem novel and it's been years since I saw the Tarkovsky film but it would seem to me that the religious metaphor was a lot more present in your film than his. I wonder was it consciously added or was it present in the book?

SS: I guess I would characterise myself as an optimistic atheist. Bearing that in mind, I did want our version to be able to withstand several different interpretations, and the film is sort of proposing the idea that each of us was created by the feeling that existed between two people, and that if you could isolate that feeling before it was acted upon, this film is basically saying that there's a possibility that we return to a place where only that feeling exists, that it has no connection to consciousness as we understand it right now. And I felt that you could look at that in any number of ways. The Lem novel and the Tarkovsky film were created in Soviet bloc countries, and you have to wonder what effect that has on an artist contemplating heavy, philosophical issues. Certainly I think our film's more optimistic than the book or the Tarkovsky film. They end similarly but in the book and the Tarkovsky film, he's not with Rheya. So that was my big change. I did want that happy ending.

Q8: What is your favourite film and why?

GC: I did a live television version of Fail Safe, I guess for personal reasons. The first time I saw it, it was a film which was sort of the straight version of Dr Strangelove, which I happen to think is the perfect film. Sidney Lumet directed it. As a child, you love the things you see on television, and television was what brought Fail Safe back, just like it brought It's a Wonderful Life back. It was when I was first aware of film-making. I loved the idea of talking about very difficult political and social issues in the heat of those issues. To go after the cold war and after nuclear arms, it was a ballsy thing to do. Strangelove is great and you've gotta love it, but unfortunately it came out first and you can't really do the spoof and have the straight version come out later, cause it's just death for the straight version. Henry Fonda is the president and Walter Matthau is a drum-beating Republican and it was just a beautiful film, beautifully shot. I just remember it being the first film that I was really affected by, cinematically and acting-wise, and socially, too. That was it for me.

SS: The Third Man, probably. I actually wrote a thing, a few paragraphs, for the periodical Projections a few years ago about it.

GA: All about the zither, wasn't it?

SS: The zither! I actually had the pleasure a few years ago on Portobello Road, this was the first time that I'd seen a guy playing it - it was amazing. I heard the sound and I followed it. But I think that's my desert island movie.

GA: I'm afraid that's really all that we have time for. Would you please thank George and Steven.